WTF Did You Learn Today?
Feed your brain, fight decay. Now tell me, what the fuck did you learn today?
WTF Did You Learn Today?
Living Heart Forward in the Face of Ideological Violence
Welcome to What the Fuck Did You Learn Today? with Urania Zed—where the existential dread is real, the optimism is earned, and the heart offense is deployed with consent.
This episode features psychotherapist, interfaith minister, and hug-dealing disruptor Edie Weinstein. Together, Urania and Edie unpack what it means to radically resist hatred—not with hashtags or hollow platitudes, but with real, heart-to-heart connection. Edie shares the origin story of her Hug Mob movement, born from grief and spiritual calling, and kept alive by flash mobs, virtual embraces, and one unforgettable Iraq war veteran.
They dive into how human touch teaches us more than any screen ever could, how adverse experiences imprint on our bodies, and why the absence of nurturing connection is its own quiet violence. But this isn’t just a love-in—Edie brings fire too: calling out ideological cruelty, cognitive dissonance, and the insidious normalization of “us vs. them” narratives.
From free mom hugs at Pride to standing up at rallies in small-town Pennsylvania, Edie doesn’t just talk resilience—she embodies it. If you’ve ever asked yourself how to keep showing up in a world that feels like it’s falling apart, this conversation might be your answer.
Because sometimes, the most rebellious thing you can do is give a damn—and hug someone.
Love, Touch & Resilience:
- Edie Weinstein’s Website (Hug Mob, Free Mom Hugs, etc.):
https://www.opti-mystical.com - Free Mom Hugs (founded by Sara Cunningham):
https://www.freemomhugs.org - Edie’s TEDx Talk – The Taboo of Touch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBJaNrdZexU - Virginia Satir on Hugs:
Article summarizing her famous quote ("4 hugs a day for survival..."):
https://www.verywellmind.com/the-importance-of-hugging-4158376 - The Good Men Project: https://goodmenproject.com/
- The Bucks County Beacon: https://buckscountybeacon.com/author/edieweinstein/
Politics & Resilience:
- Cory Booker’s Filibuster / Capitol Protest Clip:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4893146/cory-booker-senate-floor-speech - Liz Cheney on January 6th Committee:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/us/politics/liz-cheney-jan-6.html - Leopards Eating People's Faces Party Meme Origin (KnowYourMeme):
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/leopards-eating-peoples-faces-party
Cultural References:
- Billy Jack (1971 Film) + Theme Song “One Tin Soldier”:
Billy Jack Wikipedia
YouTube – One Tin Soldier - The Cell (2000 Film with Jennifer Lopez):
IMDb – The Cell - Six Triple Eight (2024 Netflix Film):
Netflix Info Page
WWII 6888th Battalion Overview – National WWII Museum - Civic & Historical Resources:
- Underground Railroad in Bucks County, PA:
https://www.visitbuckscounty.com/things-to-do/history/underground-railroad/ - Gilda’s Club (Cancer Support):
https://www.gildasclub.org - WXPN (Edie’s go-to radio station):
https://www.xpn.org - WHYY (Philly’s NPR station):
- Underground Railroad in Bucks County, PA:
Hey, what the fuck did you learn today? I'm your host, Urania Zed. Alright. Welcome to another episode of What the Fuck Did You Learn Today? And I'm your host, Urania Zedd. And I'm here with Edie Weinstein, who is a author, a columnist, a blogger. She's the leader of the Hug Mob movement. And I'm really honored to have her join me today. Hello, Edie.
SPEAKER_01:Hi, thank you. And I love the title of the show. I realized that one of my favorite spiritual questions is, what the fuck? looking up at the whatever and saying, okay, come on, this is ridiculous. I need some guidance here. So I love it.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:I'm also a psychotherapist, a licensed social worker, interfaith minister. So I'm very busy in my life. Yes. But I'm thrilled that you asked me to be on the show. So thank you.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you so much. How does someone even... add all of those facets to their life? How did you know that you wanted to pursue a path of ministry?
SPEAKER_01:Well, there's a story behind that, a story behind everything. My husband, who died in 1998, had been going to what's called the New Seminary. It's out of New York City. And it's an interfaith seminary that was created by a rabbi, a priest, a minister, and an imam. So it's sort of like the opening line to a joke, you know, that all those people walk into a bar. And the focus of the seminary is interfaith, which is non-denominational, if you want to call it that, the motto of the school is never instead of, always in addition to. So the students are encouraged to add on to their traditions that they grew up with. So Michael had been enrolled in the new seminary. It was a two year program and he was diagnosed with hepatitis C in 1992. So by the time he enrolled, he was pretty sick and he had neuropathy in his hands and feet. So I would type his papers for him because he couldn't feel his hands were numb. I would listen to the audio tapes. He was a correspondence student. So I'd listen to the audio tapes. I would watch the videos. I would be on some of the calls. And this was before Skype, before Zoom. And it was a little more laborious. I would read to him. I had no clue why I was doing this other than to help him because we anticipated that he was going to get a liver transplant and go on to become a minister. So he got increasingly more symptomatic. And in November of... 1998 he went into thomas jefferson university hospital into the icu in a coma still waiting for a liver transplant that never happened and i literally lived at the hospital for those five and a half weeks didn't sleep at home till he died and when we turned off life support I heard the voice saying, call the seminary and ask to finish what Michael started. Now, being a psychiatric social worker, I know the difference between a spiritual calling and psychotic voices. This was the former. This was not the latter. And I knew exactly what it meant. So he died December 21st of 1998. By January of 1999, I was enrolled in the program. I called the dean, her name is Diane Burke. And I asked, I told her about my calling. And she said, we can absolutely accept you into the program and you can graduate with Michael's class this June on two conditions. One is that you're doing it for yourself too, not just for him. And the other is that if you wanna graduate this year, you have to do both years work simultaneously or wait till next year. And I said, nope, gonna do it. So that was part of my purpose after part of my grieving process was to study. And because I had already learned the course material for the first year, all I had to do was take the exams and write the papers, work on the projects. And by June of that year, I graduated. Are you familiar with the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City? No. It's the largest Gothic cathedral in the Western Hemisphere. It is so big that they neither heat it nor air condition it because it would be outrageously expensive. So the day that I graduated was a very sweltering 90 degree day in New York City. But it was an incredible experience. So since then, since 1999, I've married over 400 couples. I do funerals, weddings, baby blessings, life rituals like that. And the only time, I don't have a congregation. I don't want to deal with the nonsense. So I'm kind of an on the road kind of clergy person. And the only time that I use the word reverend is when I sign petitions. You know, they make it, you know, political, social justice petitions. Reverend has a little more of a. Yes, it
SPEAKER_02:does. How does that interact with your work, your being? How do those come into play?
SPEAKER_01:Well, first of all, I don't differentiate. In my mind, everything is spiritual. So when I do the free hug stuff, that's the hug mobsters work you're talking about. It seems too hokey to call it my ministry, but yeah, it's kind of my ministry. And I grew up in a very nurturing, touchy-feely family where everybody got hugs. We didn't leave the house or come home without a hug or an I love you. My friends know that with consent, I'm always available for a hug. I... learned pretty early on that a lot of people didn't have the kind of life experience that I did. And this is some of what was in my Ted talk was that for some people touch is limited, non-existent, abusive, coercive, or not by consent. And in order for the work that I do with the free hugs stuff, it has to be By consent. If I offer a hug to somebody and they say no, I say, okay, thank you. Hug somebody. Or there are some people that since the pandemic are not comfortable with physical hugs. So we do virtual hugs where I hug myself, they hug themselves. And it's not quite the same, but it meets the need for connectivity. We live, most of us in cultures where we're lonely. Loneliness is an epidemic. And when you hug somebody, you don't even have to know them. You're hugging someone heart to heart. There's a connection with other human beings. When the pandemic first started, I panicked thinking, oh my God, what if we can never hug again? And I said, nah, that will never happen because human beings are hardwired for touch. Our skin is our single biggest organ. So we have skin hunger, which is just as important to me as food hunger. without it babies fail to thrive so do adults right yeah so this is some of my talk that i'm giving you right here that's what's in the ted talk um so the hug mobsters the way that got started valentine's day weekend 2014 i brought a group of friends to 30th street station which is the big train station philadelphia for those who are not in our area and um we did a free hugs flash mob. And I chose that particular weekend, it was the day after Valentine's Day, because I wanted people to know that Valentine's Day is not just one day out of the year, every day. And it's not just for intimate partners. Love is for everybody. So there were a dozen of us and we walked around this big station offering hugs. And if people said yes, we'd hug them. If they said no, again, thank you. Hug somebody, even if it's yourself. And I estimated that between the 12 of us, within an hour's time, we hugged about 200 people. Now, one of them stays with me in my head and in my heart. He was an Iraq war vet who approached us and said he was the only survivor of his platoon and he had survivor's guilt. And he said, I thought about ending my life until just now when I met you people. You give me hope. Can I join you? So of course, you know, we all cried and we gave him his own free hug sign and he was off to the races, hugging his heart out. Now, all these years later, we're talking about 11 years later. I have no clue what happened in this man's life. I am praying that he went on to live a full, rich life. So the thought was, holy shit, hugs saved lives. Five months later, I found out how True, that was. On the way home from the gym at the age of 55, I had a heart attack. I was literally driving. And this is important for women to know in particular. Our symptoms are very different than men's symptoms. Women's heart attack symptoms are like jaw pain and tightness, like crushing jaw pain, torrential sweats. what else, palpitations, lightheadedness, dizziness, nausea. And like the workaholic that I was, and I'm still in recovery from it, I didn't go straight to the hospital. I drove home, called to cancel with clients. I was working as a therapist in a drug and alcohol outpatient program. So here I was addicted to my, to work. I called and said, I'm not feeling very well. Can you cancel my clients today? And I hung up and I didn't call 911. I got back in the car and I drove myself to the hospital. Don't ever, ever, ever do that. Yeah. I could have killed somebody. I could have died on the way, but I didn't. So as part of my cardiac rehab, I walked around my little local town, Doylestown, Pennsylvania. And I thought, why don't I combine the hugging with the walking? Because hugs are cardiac friendly and they're emotionally heart friendly. And the rest is history. I've hugged all over the country in Canada. And then in 2018, I hugged my way across Ireland. It was amazing. Amazing experience.
SPEAKER_02:So how do you think we learn from touch, from hug, and how do you think that might be different from how we learn from our screens, how we learn from these removed ways of receiving information?
SPEAKER_01:Well, it's interesting you call it information because it is. When you are hugging somebody you know and love, you feel safe. Right. You feel a sense of trust. This person's not going to hurt me and I'm not going to hurt them. But when somebody asked me, a reporter asked me this when I was doing a lot of media coverage for Hug Mobsters. She said, what's the difference? Somebody from the Philadelphia Inquirer. She said, what's the difference between hugging someone you know and hugging a stranger? And I said, well, when you hug somebody you already know and love. There's that immediate connection. But when you hug somebody you don't know, after the hug is done, you're no longer a stranger. You know, your heart speaks to their heart. And when I hug people, those who I've hugged will tell you this. I do heart to heart, like left side to left side. And I put my hand behind their head, like a very maternal kind of thing. So it's like, oh, yeah, you're rocking a baby. It's like, oh, baby, kind of like that. Yeah. I'm always the last one to let go. They're the first ones to let go. And I always, again, have to get a verbal yes. I had this amazing experience about two, three weeks ago. And since I know the nature of your beliefs and hopefully some of your audience, you'll appreciate this. I was wearing a t-shirt that a friend gave me that said hug dealer on it, black t-shirt, white words, hug dealer. So
SPEAKER_00:I
SPEAKER_01:was in a local supermarket and this young man approaches me who's, I'm guessing on the spectrum. That was my sense of him. And he says, I like your t-shirt. And I said, would you like a hug? Oh, no, I don't like people touching me in a sing-songy kind of voice. I said, okay, how about if we do a virtual hug? So we did that. And he said, you know who really needs hugs? Those people in Washington, D.C. They all really need hugs. And he said, would you hug the president? And I said, sure, but I want to take a shower afterward. And he laughed. And he said, I bet if If you hugged him, he would cry. So he said, I don't think he got enough hugs. And he said, you know what? You're right. You know, a lot of very angry, disconnected, hateful people don't get enough nurturing touch by consent, platonic nurturing touch by consent.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. No, I think part of your TED talk, you went there. through the kind of like baseline of four hugs minimum, that is kind of like just the baseline of, you know, getting some of your needs met. And then there's the eight, eight hugs, 12 hugs.
SPEAKER_01:Right. And that was her, her theory.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And, but, and that made me think about like, you know, either the absence of of any of that or the kind of the inverse, like four slaps, four inappropriate touches or more in a day, which, you know, that's a reality too. And just how those things, how people learn from that at any age. And, you know, and I think that, I guess, do you have any experience with kind of how how we deal with that, how that might change someone's view of the world. Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:I mean, the way that we're treated, and it could be, I mean, as a therapist, I work with children, I work with adults, I work with senior adults, people older than me, and those who have experienced what's called ACE, Adverse Childhood Experiences, excuse me, abuse, trauma, neglect, it lives in the body. So you talked about the four slaps, the four mean, hurtful words, the four names that someone's called, nasty names that someone's called. We're sponges. We absorb that. And it takes a lot of undoing to heal that. And I would like to think that even if I hug a stranger and they don't know me, they know nothing about me, they don't know what I do professionally, and I don't know anything about them except that they're another human being, I'd like to think that some of that is stripped away. One of the other things that I do is called free mom hugs. Have you ever heard of that?
SPEAKER_02:No.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. Sorry about this. I'm a therapist and my voice gets a little gravelly at the end of the day. But Sarah Cunningham is a woman in Oklahoma City. And I don't remember how many years ago it was. Her son came out to her as a gay man. And she was, I don't know, evangelical, but... Christian and she went into a tailspin. She thought, how can I choose between God and my son? And then she realized, I don't have to. She had an epiphany and said, I don't have to. He invited her to go to a pride event in Oklahoma City. And she made up a little button that said free mom hugs. And she went around hugging willing recipients. And by the end of the day, she was covered in tears and glitter is the way I've heard her describe it. And a movement was founded. So she invited other people, moms, dads whoever to do free hugs at pride events so i've done them how long ago i heard of her i don't know within the last 10 years so i i'm a free mom hugger too so i go to pride events and do hugs as well and that undoes a lot of years of um longing to be accepted for who you are I am definitely an ally. My clients know it. My community knows it. The other thing that Sarah did was that she left her church, became an interfaith minister, and she officiates at same-sex weddings. And she's also a stand-in mom at same-sex weddings.
SPEAKER_02:Oh,
SPEAKER_01:wow. Which means she'll say, if your mom won't be there, I'll be there and I'll bring the bubbles. So I so admire what she's done. We've never met, but as a journalist, I've interviewed her.
SPEAKER_02:Sarah
SPEAKER_01:Cunningham. Okay. Sarah Cunningham. S-A-R-A. Sarah Cunningham, Free Mom Hugs. Where are you located? I'm just outside of Philadelphia in Lansdowne. All right. You did tell me that. So look up Free Mom Hugs. You don't have to be a mom. You just have to be a willing hugger. You may want to get involved with them because there is one in, there is Free Mom Hugs Philadelphia. Okay. Yeah. Not far from Philly. There might be one in your county too.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. Well, I want to do a little pivot here because I want to ask you the question of the show. What the fuck did you learn today, Edie?
SPEAKER_01:Oh my God. So many things. Um, um, Does it have to be something new that I've never known before or just a stronger, you know?
SPEAKER_02:I think it could be building upon something you've already known, something completely new, something, you know, it's really just an evolution of a thought.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. I learned that I'm more resilient in the face of all the chaos going on in the world than I thought I was. Because on election day, like most people I knew, we were shocked. about the outcome. I had worked for Kamala Harris's campaign. I was an active volunteer. I swore it was going to happen. I would have bet almost anything on the fact that she would be our president now. So when it happened, the next day, I said, OK, I've got to compartmentalize. I still have to go to work. I still need to do my normal people things. I still need to see my clients. I helped take care of my grandchildren. Still have to do that. so today i was with two you know with a friend and a cousin who are on the same page as i am and we talked about you know how how we feel how we're integrating all of this. Yesterday, I was with friends, Cosmically Coincidentally, who are also on the same page. What happened, I believe in what I call cosmic coincidence. Yesterday, my power went out in the afternoon. So I said, okay, I'm going to go grab dinner somewhere. And I drove around Doylestown for a little bit. I said, nah, I'll stop there. Nah, I'll stop there. So I ended up going to this place called Honey Grow. I don't know if they have one in your area. Yeah,
SPEAKER_02:I love Honey
SPEAKER_01:Grow. They have really good
SPEAKER_02:brownies.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I didn't. I'm doing my best. Chocolate is my drug of choice. So I also have diabetes. So I'm trying to steer clear of that. But I walked in and who do I see but these two friends who I haven't seen in several months. And they were just getting their food. I was wanting to get mine. So we spent probably an hour trying to solve all the problems on the planet. And I'm learning how many people in my life, I mean, I already know that most of the people in my life feel the same way I do. By hearing from them, here's what I do to stay sane and vertical. That's what I call it, it's being sane and vertical. So I just keep, every day, keep waking up thinking, okay, something's got to change for the better. And I pray all throughout the day. And my prayers usually are, like I said, you know, like, okay, come on, give me my marching orders. Who am I supposed to talk to today? What am I supposed to say? And I say that I show up, stand up and speak out. So I go to protests and rallies. I spoke at one in Doylestown on the 5th of April. I'm gonna be helping out this tomorrow, not tomorrow, what's today? Today's Wednesday. So Saturday on the 19th, I'll be helping out at the rally in Doylestown again. And we're collecting items for local food pantries. and and programs that help people so it's not just saying no to what we don't want it's saying yes to helping people in concrete tangible ways so i went to costco today and picked up a whole bunch of stuff and i'm going to be collecting other if other people have stuff they want to give me to take i'm going to take you take that with me too um yeah So, yeah, so that's what I'm learning is that every day I just keep on keeping on. I'm, you know, I'm resilient. Got to, you know, got to bounce back.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I like that. I guess how I'm still like trying to face each day with some type of resilience, just in terms of I read a lot of news. I work in communications. I've worked in communications for a very long time. And I am trying to figure out how to be resilient in the face of, it's how do you fight your ideas against other ideas? It's like we're living in this very, very kind of violent idea scape. And I keep thinking back to when social media started kind of simmering it was just, it was laughed off. Like it was seen as something that was like a joke or that wasn't serious. And now I think we're seeing the actual violence of the wrong ideology, the wrong messages, the wrong otherness that we force on each other. And I think it's both sides, like, you know, there's violence that's happening on both sides and it's been happening, this is new. And so it's just like, I'm trying to figure out how to fight this ideological violence that is happening.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I think a lot of it is from a psychological perspective, understanding that people are shaped by their environment, by what they're immersed in. I used to call it being immersed in love soup. When you're feeling warm and fuzzy and having good things happen. I don't know what to call this. Shit stew? I don't know. And what continues to amaze me is how... I don't know if it's wiring, brain wiring, that you and I see things differently than people who voted for him see things. And they are just as convinced that we're screwed up and they're right as we may feel about them. I have some rules for myself. I don't name call. I don't focus on his appearance. He looks however he looks. I focus on what he says and what he does. I focus on what people who support him say and do.
SPEAKER_02:I
SPEAKER_01:ask a lot of questions. I'll say, please tell me how he reflects your personal values. What is it about him? And what is it about you that are a fit? Excuse me. And then I'll get a little deeper and I'll say, if you're not racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, if you have never raped, assaulted, stolen, or if you don't lie, all the time. Why in the name of all that is holy, do you support someone who is all those things and does all those things?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And usually there's, but Biden did that. And I said, no, no, no, no. He's not in office right now. This guy's in office right now, but Hillary, Hillary's not in office right now. And there's usually some kind of cognitive dissonance that goes on for people who see that his, um, whatever you want to call them, policies, ideas, executive orders, benefit them in some way until they don't. I mean, I'm sure as somebody who's well-read and listens to podcasts, there are people that have voters remorse. There are people who say, oh my God, I didn't think this would happen. We know that, have you ever seen the Facebook page, leopards eating our faces? Yes, the leopards eating people's faces party. Right, I thought they were gonna eat their faces, not my face. Right. And it isn't until it affects them that they say, this isn't good. We don't like this. And my take on it, and this is not virtue signaling. This isn't me being holier than thou, but it shouldn't have to happen to you for it to matter to you. Yeah. Okay. We are all interconnected. When one domino falls, they all fall.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. Well, I tend to view this because I remember on the day of the election, I was a little bit less optimistic than you were. I could kind of see the signs in the other direction. And I remember thinking to myself, we seem to all, I don't want to generalize, but there is this fascination with strength. and power. And the fascination comes a lot of times from people who don't have it. And I think, you know, I am currently feeling, you know, the tables have turned and now I feel like, you know, my agency as a person has, you know, I can still do the same things that I could do before, but there is this feeling of this diminished sense of power for certain types of people. And I feel like part of that is why there are just some people who are so fascinated with winning with power, even if it's not them and they can't seem to imagine that it would ever be them on the losing side or even being able to face that being that, that loser, you know? And, and I, you know, I, I, I think about this constantly because I, I think it's, it's deeper than, you know, men versus women or, you know, different racial groups. It's, there's always this feeling of we're the winners and you are not. And, and I think that's a hard pill for, it's hard for me, you know, I used to speed skate and I hated losing, but like, I still would compete. You know, like I, I lose at a lot of things, but I still try those things. And so I just, I, I, I, I keep, that thought is always in my head when I see people who like really love Trump because they love this idea of winning at all costs.
SPEAKER_01:He is not a winner. How many businesses has he bankrupted? How many contractors and employees has he cheated? That's not a winner. So I think part of it is we need to redefine what winning means, right? This country is not winning. We're going down the tube. But it's the
SPEAKER_02:illusion. Right.
SPEAKER_01:That is the illusion. Now you were talking about competitive. I was a competitive swimmer from the time I was 11 until I was 18. And part of the reason I was, I mean, I swam when I was four years old, but the reason I joined a swim team is that I have asthma. And my doc, you know, our family doctor said, get her in the pool. Competitors that'll strengthen her lungs. So I swam from 11 to 18. And then I coached for three summers afterward as lifeguard. And I, I had shoe boxes filled with blue ribbons, some red ribbons. And I had Olympic aspirations, but not Olympic discipline. So I obviously didn't want to get up at the crack of dawn to practice every day and then after school, and didn't want to make it my whole life. And I was competitive, but I didn't hate the other swimmers. They challenged me to be my best. And when I see what's going on now, it's not winners and losers. We are all losers right now. What's happening right now affects everybody, whether they think that they're in the 1% economically. It's still going to eventually someday affect them or somebody they know and love. And I especially don't understand how people of color, people in the LGBTQ community, women, immigrants, how they could support him. I had an experience a couple of weeks ago. I was taking a walk through town with my cousin and her dog, and we're sitting on a bench, and I see this family walking toward us, very tall black man, his wife and his daughter, and he's wearing a red baseball cap, and I couldn't quite see what was on it. And you know, when you see the red, and I said, no, it wasn't a Phillies baseball cap. Right. Ooh, okay. And he says, gotta love it. And I said, no, I don't. And he says, but you gotta love the country. And I said, I do love my country, which is why I don't love that hat.
SPEAKER_00:Have a
SPEAKER_01:nice day. And he trots off. And I thought, how... is that possible? And that was the day that I was wearing my, my, um, hug dealer t-shirt. That was before I met the young man. So it was almost like meeting this young man healed my heart a little bit. The one that, that said I should go down to DC and hug, you know, who, um, so I consider myself someone with privilege. I'm white. I'm well-educated. Um, I'm a mature woman. Um, I'm middle class, you know, I can support myself. So it feels incumbent upon me to use that privilege to help whoever I can. And I'm, and I'm a social worker. I mean, it's part of the, you know, part of the job.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So, you know, being with kindred spirits and now you are one of them, that helps sustain me too. knowing that I'm not alone in my, my sister described it when I was talking to her about it last week. I said, no, it's not depression. She said despair. And I said, yep, that's the word. But to me, despair indicates futility. It's not futile. I'm going to keep on doing what I need to do and saying what I need to say.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah. And I guess I think I definitely, part of the reason why I, wanted to do this podcast was because I think, you know, there is that kind of like, you know, talk is cheap, but actually talk is very powerful. Words are very powerful as we're seeing. And I think, you know, I think we're seeing that words are being censored. Like certain ideas are now being, are being censored or trying to be shut out. But I think one of the ways that we still can just fight and, and fight for, you know, trying to nudge a little bit of new learning or a little bit of, you mentioned cognitive dissonance. I think we need to find a more relatable term for that because I think there are some trigger words for people who just won't even want to understand what cognitive dissonance means because it's too difficult or it's exclusive, it's elite.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. That's an easier one. Yeah. Well, OK, so maybe another way to reframe it for me, cognitive dissonance is seeing what's going on, but wearing blinders like, OK, I don't want to believe this about this person. And I hold people accountable on both sides of the aisle. You were talking about violence. I don't support violence by anybody. I'm a pacifist. Yeah, no, I, you know, it. And it's really hard to, I don't even know how to do. I mean, words are powerful. You know, when you were a kid, you probably heard sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me. Names hurt, words hurt. Yes. I don't insult people who voted differently than I do. And if there are people that say they have voters remorse, I said, okay, you can't go back and change your vote, but here's what you can do. donate to NPR or PBS, donate to Planned Parenthood, NAACP, the ACLU, volunteer at your food pantry, do good things in the world. Make a difference in the world. Because everything that this administration, and I don't even like using his name, I don't want to do that, but this administration, most things that they're doing are tearing down the social supports. I was listening to, I don't know which show it was on NPR this afternoon, and the Philly station, WHYY, the person was saying something about 1% of the support that this station gets comes from the federal government. The rest is all donations. But what she was saying is that there are pockets in the country that that get more than 1% from the federal government. And without that support, without that financial support, they'll either cease to exist or won't, not NPR in general, but those stations will either cease to exist or not be able to get all of the news that they need. And the other thing, the words that people use, libtard, radical, leftist, socialist, communist. Two weeks ago on the 5th of April, I told you I had spoken at the rally in Doylestown and that's what I spoke about. I said, I introduced myself and I said, these are the names that I've been called. And I said like that. And I said, but today I'm a patriot. And so are all of you. There were between 1300 and 1500 people there. And I said, so are all of you. And I launched into, I love my country. So of course, I want equal rights for everybody. I love my country. So of course I want LGBTQ people to be able to be who they truly are. And for people of color to be able to walk safely in the streets for gun violence, to be obliterated, all those things. Yeah. Who the hell would disagree with that? Right. Get it. How could anybody not want the same rights for other people that they have themselves or want for themselves?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That that's, what's extraordinary to me.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And I, and I think it, it, there is this, it's the ideas, it's the ideology, it's the othering, you know, there are, there are people out there who might see me and not think that I am a person or, you know, a human being. And, you know, and I, I'm, I've lived with that all of my life. Like real, once I realized, you know, who, how people, certain people see me in the world, like this, it's, you know, you acknowledge it, but I think every day when I see some of these ideas and, you know, beliefs that are being shared on the Internet through, you know, memes, there are news sites that spread these ideas. There are message boards that, you know, I think we're seeing in more and more. like intentional language from the administration that there are people that they don't, there are people that they don't see as people. And more and more, I think I interpret this kind of stripping away of a lot of the social benefits that people rely on as a way of them not even seeing our society as like real people. Like we're just, we're just numbers that, you know, that don't really matter, you know, and, and it's, but, but I, you know, and I think that that's a, that's a new reality that I'm trying to get used to. And that's kind of how I, I rationalize that idea that you're saying, you know, how can you, you know, I'm a patriot. I want equal rights for people, but there, you know, knowing that someone out there is like, what do you mean equal? Yeah. Equal rights for people. You're not a person. You know what I mean? Like,
SPEAKER_01:And that's hard. I mean, I have never, now are people going to be able to see a video or just audio? Cause the other one I just saw, I just heard audio. I didn't see a video. Oh yes. Yeah. So they will see what your beautiful face looks like. But yeah. And when you talk about othering, I do other, I other the people that hate and there's a, um, you're probably too young to remember this, but there was a movie when I was a kid called Billy Jack, look at, look it up. Um, and there's a song called one tin soldier. That was the theme song from it. And, um, Billy Jack was, um, the character was a Vietnam that came back and he was a martial arts dude and his, um, the woman that he was seeing ran a school for runaway kids, homeless kids, abused kids. And it was in a town, I don't even remember what state it was in. And it was very much like what happened during the civil rights movement, that a lot of these kids were Native American. So the sheriff and his little minions mistreated these kids like they were sitting in a diner and they poured flour over their heads. to make them look white. So Billy Jack, although he said he wanted to be non-violent, he beat the crap out of these guys. But the song, Look Up One Tin Soldier, and then the movie Billy Jack. But it was about that, that there are some people who live to fight, that that's how they get there. And I don't consider that power. I don't consider that strength at all. I have a really hard time with bullies. no matter what capacity they are. Again, as a therapist, I work with people who have been bullied. And when I hear their stories, my mama bear comes out, claws bared. And, you know, I said, is it okay with you if I share something? And they all say yes. And I say, I want to say to the perpetrator of your abuse, your bullying, how effing dare, and I use the word, how fucking dare you treat this person like that. Nobody deserves to be treated like that. Not because of who they are, not because of where they live, where they came from. My grandparents were immigrants. They came here from Russia, thinking in the 1800s during the pogrom. None of my family, not good, was in Europe for the Holocaust. But I have friends whose parents are Holocaust survivors. And it's just the fact that they are here is a testimony to resilience. And the human species, we're resilient. And when kids that I work with now talk about how horrible things are, I say, yeah, they are. And when I was growing up, it was the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, the Cold War, the assassinations of JFK, RFK, MLK, who else? Malcolm X. That's the one I was going to say. Lots of people. And You know, before that was World War II. Before that was Japanese Americans being put in internment camps. Before that it was Native American. I got goosebumps as we're talking. I mean, America has never been great in the way that you know who is saying it should be.
SPEAKER_02:Well, we've had an illusion of greatness. Like I think part of the, you know, the American dream is like, that's been the slogan. There's always been this idea of, of what we could be.
SPEAKER_01:What is it, American exceptionalism? Is that the term? I've heard that term used before. I've
SPEAKER_02:heard that before as well. I'm sure there's a whole list of names, marketing terms for the country.
SPEAKER_01:My father, he was first generation American born. And he would say, this is the greatest country on earth. Not so much anymore. In Yiddish, there's a word Shonda, S-H-O-N-D-A, which means disgrace. My parents got, you know, they both have long since passed, but they would say what's happening now is a Shonda. Yeah. And it should never happen. You know, what happened in our state, again, for those who are listening outside of Pennsylvania, on the first night of Passover, our governor, Josh Shapiro, the governor's mansion was set on fire by an arsonist who, for whatever reason, wanted to kill him and his family. And he actually said that had he encountered the governor in the house, he would have hit him over the head with a hammer and killed him.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And hatred is just as virulent. It's a virus. It's just as virulent as COVID. Right? Yeah. Hatred kills, othering kills. Yes. There was a, I don't remember when it was, like a PBS special 30 years ago called something about the enemy. I forget what it was called, but the word enemy was in the title. Okay. And it said, before... we create war, we create enemies. We see the other person as the, something, maybe the word war was in the title, but we see that person as being different from us. We demonize them. We make them the bad guys. And usually there are people that just want a fair shake, just want to be treated with dignity, right? Yeah. So I am so thrilled with companies, with Harvard, with Costco, that are standing up and saying, DEI, we're not going to abandon it. I rejoined Costco recently. about a month or two ago, I had been a member before to let my membership lapse. And I walked in there and I said, I want to join again. And my name was still in the system. And there was a young woman there who actually I saw her today. She didn't see me, but I was in Costco today. And I said, I want to rejoin. And here's why. And she said, I've heard of DEI. Can you tell me what it is? And I explained it to her. She says, oh, maybe that's why we're getting flooded with new memberships. And I went, oh, yeah, the things that I love about Costco is like it's walking into a world market. There are people walking From all over the world, they're speaking different languages, wearing different garb, different, you know, representing their cultures. And I love it. I absolutely love, you know, love seeing that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I've been a member of Costco for 20 years, I think now.
SPEAKER_01:And
SPEAKER_02:I was I was glad to see that they didn't go the Target way, which I
SPEAKER_01:am doing my best not to go. I mean, I would go a week usually because I'm saving money. Yeah. willing to stand up and say, no, we are not going to comply. And those who knuckle under, what are they so afraid of? And also what gives people the courage to do what they do, especially people on the other side of the aisle who say no to this, this president and this administration. You know, I look at people who do what I call meeting the moment. Yeah. Cory Booker. I don't think I would have a few hours doing what he did. I would have to pee right away. But he met the moment. I look at Bishop Buddy, the Episcopal bishop that addressed the president right after the ordination, inauguration. And she called him out. I look at who else? Well, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, you know? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:They were early.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. What gives certain people the courage to do that?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Knowing that they, you know, that they could be threatened and are likely to be threatened.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:What is it about them? That's different. That has to stand up to bullying.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:That's yeah. That, cause it's like, what, what is it with, within their spirit, within their mind? Like what, what is it that's, that's happening behind, you know, their thoughts and their actions to, you know, cause it, I'm sure it's scary. Like I, you know, I, I'm somewhat still scared, like having this podcast is like, you know, I'm voicing opinions that are not, you know, the popular opinion or the, you know, The chosen opinion, I guess, is the
SPEAKER_01:new. Again, when you think about when I think popularity, it isn't just about numbers. It's about who supports you. And the reality is, yes, not win by a majority. Yeah, not a what's the word for it? A mandate.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. She only lost by a small percentage point. And you think about what percentage people either didn't vote or voted third party. Yes. So if everybody who could have voted, voted for Kamala, we would be having a whole different conversation right now.
SPEAKER_02:Sure. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. But no, I do. I would love to like kind of learn, like how do you, like learning about Kamala, How do you, like, how do you learn from speaking out or going against a bully or going against someone who, someone who could physically beat you, but you're, you know, you're still, because, you know, we see those examples that were, you know, growing up, there was always like a loud mouth little kid who would, you know, curse out people bigger than them and they'd get beat up, but they'd still, you know, come back fighting the next day. And so it, there is something to be said for, you know, just continuing to fight even when the odds are against you when you're not the strongest in the room? Well, I
SPEAKER_01:think of it as the courage of our convictions. I was taught to speak up for the underdog. My parents, God bless them, were active volunteers in the community. They said, if you can help somebody, you need to help somebody. They both were full time. They both, you know, they raised my sister and me. They volunteered in their synagogue. My dad was a volunteer firefighter. My mom volunteered at the hospital on Christian holidays like Easter and Christmas. She would volunteer so that the Christian, you know, one of the people that would normally have had to work would be there. They donated to charities. My dad did something back then that probably would be considered physical therapy now. It was called patterning. He worked with a little girl in our neighborhood who I think had muscle So he would go over there, I guess, once a week and help her move her limbs around, move her body around. Even in their retirement, when they moved to Florida, they both volunteered in the community that they lived in. So my mom taught senior stretch class called Stretching with Selma and water aerobics. And my dad worked part-time in their town center as... supervising the gym. He was a gym rat and, um, handing out bowling shoes and skates. And one year he volunteered to Santa Claus and because he had six pack abs, he had to stuff a lot of pillows. And so Santa Claus named Moish. So we had Moish and Selma, my parents.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But they taught my sister and me, you know, you need to take, you know, we need to take care of each other. We're, you know, we're a community. We need to take care of each other.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And that's part of this. I feel like I'm part of this global community because I'm not just an American citizen. I'm a world citizen. And what happens here affects everywhere else on the planet.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:Everything we do, and I know this sounds grandiose, but every action we take, every word we speak has a ripple effect for better or for worse. Yeah. And I want it to be for better in my life.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I agree.
SPEAKER_01:I
SPEAKER_00:agree.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I think it's 10 after nine. We've been going for almost an hour. I
SPEAKER_01:could
SPEAKER_02:keep talking.
SPEAKER_01:My mother said that I started talking at six months and never stopped.
SPEAKER_02:Nice. I wonder, what was it about, do you remember early on when you first started learning how to read or when you first started talking, what that felt like?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I don't remember at six months, but I would always carry books around me like they were teddy bears. I loved to read. My mother would take my sister and me to the library every week for story hour. We'd sit on the floor and we'd look up at, I called her the library lady because I couldn't say library at first, the library lady, and she would read to us. And we would bring home a stack of books, read them, bring them back the next week for more. I loved when the bookmobile came to school because my mother would give us some money and we could buy books. We had the original hardcover Highlights magazine. I don't know if you remember.
SPEAKER_02:I remember Highlights.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, Goofus and Gallant. Yep. From what I understand, I have a family that I do therapy with and they have them. They say Goofus and Gallant are in them. I don't, you know. Oh, no. They got rid of. Goose and Gallant. They were actually, Goose and Gallant were actually good reminders of doing good versus doing evil. I really like that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So we had always had books in the house. We had the Funk and Wagnalls Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia. Yeah. Yep. and my mother and i would um i as i mentioned had asthma when i was a kid and i had allergies so once a month i forget how often maybe my mother and i would go to the doctor's office for my allergy shots and while we were waiting we would play word games where she would say a word and i would tell her how to spell it or she would spell a word and i would tell her what the word was and if i didn't know a word she'd say look it up and i said how can i look it up if i don't know how to spell it she said start with the first letter and then look it up
SPEAKER_00:so
SPEAKER_01:education
UNKNOWN:was really important in my family.
SPEAKER_01:And as far as career was concerned, I had no clue what I wanted to do. Back then, women were likely either teachers, secretaries, or nurses. Pretty much it. And I really didn't want to do any of those things. So my parents always told me, you could choose whatever career you want as long as you like it and you can support yourself doing it. So My initial degree was in psychology, and then I went back a few years later to become a social worker. So I have a master's degree in social work. And you had asked early in the conversation about adding things on, like how you do that. I call myself professionally polyamorous. Nice. So I've always had more than, in most of my adult life, more than one job at the same time.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I'm a professional hyphenate. You know, I've got all these Renaissance women, all these different things. My resume is about three pages long.
SPEAKER_02:Well, that's wonderful. And I guess I'll say the C word. Do you consider yourself a very
SPEAKER_01:curious person? Always, always. Okay. Yeah. My mother said that I would always ask questions, usually at the dinner table. And usually about sex. So I don't even remember that, but my sister didn't have to ask questions cause I asked them first. And my father would look at my mother and say, you take this one. I don't know how to answer that. And the joke was in our family, he was outnumbered because even the dog was female, his wife and the dog. But yeah, I was always curious. I always wanted to know how things tick, what makes things, how, what makes people tick, how things work. When I was, I forget how old I was, I was under 12 and I was lying on the grass at a friend's house and a whole bunch of other friends there. I was looking up at the sky. It was almost like a dome and I could see the clouds moving. And I remember thinking, are the clouds moving or is the planet moving? And, you know, I would ask, I was a quirky kid. I would ask all kinds of bizarre questions and my friends would look at me like I was from another planet. I told my parents, I said, I'm an alien baby. you know, left on your doorstep. And I think sometimes they believed me, but then my mother would say, no, I know you're mine. I hatched you. I would talk to fairies as a kid. And she said, when I couldn't find you, I knew you were down the street at the same, you know, where the library was, was like a little pocket park. She said, I would always know to find you sitting on the park bench or on the picnic table, talking to the fairies. So I love reading. I love listening to podcasts, TED Talks. I have two radio stations I listen to. One is WHYY NPR, and the other is WXPN. Are you familiar with that? Oh, of course, yes. I've been a member of both of them, a sustaining member for lots of years. So those are my go-to stations. And for me, learning... I'm a lifelong learner. I'm 66 years old. Probably not going to go back to school for any reason. But I learn new stuff every day. And I learn from my clients.
SPEAKER_02:I
SPEAKER_01:learn a lot about being a human being from being a therapist. And it's an honor to be a therapist because people let me into the inner sanctum. And I don't ever want to betray that trust. I'm grateful. I've been doing it probably 45 years. I've been a counselor, therapist in some form or another. I love all the things. I'm grateful. I'm not anywhere near retirement. I said, as long as I can think and speak and type, I can be a journalist. I can be an author. I can be a therapist. So I'm grateful to be able to do all that I do.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Have you found, is there anything that, being a curious person, is there anything that you found that you resisted wanting to know more about or that you know that you get scared about
SPEAKER_01:you know um i was talking and it might have been in one of the conversations to actually both yesterday with my friends um and then today with my friend and my cousin um i don't want to be able to see in some inside someone's mind who hates i said it must be dark and scary in there There was a movie, I don't know who, years ago about this, I don't know if she was a therapist, psychiatrist, who went into the mind of a serial killer to see what it was like. Wasn't it The Cell?
SPEAKER_02:The Cell?
SPEAKER_01:Yes. With Jennifer Lopez and Vincent D'Onofrio? Okay, yeah. I don't want to do that. Yes, I have compassion for people with mental illness. Yes, I have compassion for wounded, damaged people, but I don't want to go into their minds because it's too scary. I mean, I don't know if I'd be able to get out. Maybe that's part of it too. But it's hard to see people who are self-destructing and taking other people with them. So I resist knowing more about that. I could never be a forensic therapist. Sure. Yeah. I could never do that. It would be too late. So I play it a little safer doing the work that I do now.
SPEAKER_02:Sure. Sure. So are you not a fan of like horror movies or horror stories? No, no, no, no. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I don't, I mean, I, what was it? The Exorcist. was probably the scariest movie i ever saw i was in high school came out and i don't want to see that again i mean i like the song tubular bells when i hear that i can i can listen to that song and i also don't like reading books or watching movies if i know there isn't going to either be a happy ending or the bad guys aren't going to get theirs at the end
SPEAKER_02:yeah
SPEAKER_01:have you seen the six triple eight do you know that story no it's on netflix um It's about this brigade of Black women during World War II who enlisted. They all volunteered. And their job was to sort and make sure that the mail was delivered because there was a backlog, I don't know, six months or something, of mail coming and going so that the folks at home didn't know condition of their loved ones. you know, they're soldiers. Um, and then the military people, um, missed letters from home. So they were given this potentially no win assignment because they had to deal with, I don't know how many millions of pieces of mail, but they also had to deal with sexism and racism. Yeah. And I resisted watching it. And then I thought I heard that there was a happy ending. So I watched it and it was phenomenal. Um, And they were given 90 days to complete this job. They did it, I think, in a month where they got all the mail moving. And it was Eleanor Roosevelt, who was the first lady at the time, that propelled this and supported it. So watch it if you can, the 6888.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, you said it's on
SPEAKER_01:Netflix? Netflix, uh-huh. Okay, all right. And I think about what I didn't learn growing up. I had never heard of them. I'd never heard of Black Wall Street. I had never heard about the Trail of Tears. I never, you know, a lot. I mean, yeah, I heard about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. Right. And the Civil Rights Movement. That was probably it. Which they're now
SPEAKER_02:trying to erase. Right. The stories.
SPEAKER_01:You can't pretend it didn't happen, folks. Yeah. I mean, here in where I live in Bucks County, there were a lot of way stations for the Underground Railroad.
UNKNOWN:Mm hmm.
SPEAKER_01:There was a place that I worked called Gilda's Club. I don't know if you're familiar with Gilda Radner. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I
SPEAKER_01:remember.
SPEAKER_02:Baba Wawa.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Gilda died of ovarian cancer. And after she died, her husband at the time, Gene Wilder, and her counselor, her brother, created Gilda's Clubs, which are non-residential cancer support communities. And it's for people with cancer and for their families and friends. So the building where I worked was a way station for the underground railroad
SPEAKER_02:oh wow
SPEAKER_01:yeah and i was told that the first time i walked in there for their open house and um i could feel like sometimes i was the last one there at night and i could i'm very sensitive to energy and i could feel spirits i could feel energy there
SPEAKER_00:now i don't
SPEAKER_01:know if people died in the house or just the fact that they were there and left traces of themselves there and i would have conversations with them and i say look you were here first Don't mess with me. I'm leaving. Yep, leaving you in peace. But yeah, this is, there were a lot of Quaker communities in the Delaware Valley that assisted as well. So there's also a Black History Museum in Bucks County. So folks are interested in that. This is also an area where Lenny Lenape Indians lived.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:So there's a lot, a lot of culture here and, you know, in this area. Yeah. Not just, not just white folks.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I didn't, I didn't know that about Doylestown.
SPEAKER_01:Yep. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, it's warm. The Gilda's club is in Warminster. Okay. Yeah. There's a lot, you know, a lot of history in this area.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:No. So even if schools aren't able to teach real history, take it upon yourselves, educate yourself. Yeah. Are you familiar with the teacher in Idaho that got in trouble for the banner in her classroom that said, everyone is welcome here?
SPEAKER_02:Yes. Me and Sarah talked about that in our first podcast. Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:yeah. So I don't know whether she had to take the sign down. I'm assuming she's still working there because she was on the Today Show. She got a lot of media coverage. and a local printer made t-shirts with that on there. So you got one. So if you're interested, everybody's welcome here. And who could find that to be objectionable? Is that your way of saying to the kiddos, you're welcome here, but you're not. I just don't get it. I never understood excluding anybody. Yeah. Yeah. So I think if we want to make the world a better place, we need to include rather than exclude, you know, and even people we disagree with. I am more than happy to sit down peacefully and talk to people on the other side of the aisle. Yeah. I'm more than happy. In fact, last year, I think it was, I took part in something again, another NPR thingy called one small step and where they match people to of different beliefs and values and upbringing. And they interview, they have us talk to each other. And then it was sent to the Library of Congress and it's in the archives. My favorite, I did it three times, but my favorite one was this young woman in her twenties in the South, never left the South, never met a Northerner and was taught to fear us. Grew up in an evangelical home, family, you know, red as can be politically. And as we're having this conversation, you know, she told me her background, I told her mine. I noticed she had this really big tattoo on her arm of, it looked like a form of Mother Mary. And I said, oh, you know, who is that? And she said, Our Lady of Guadalupe, which is, you know, version of mother Mary. And I said, she said, but I really appreciate, I don't know if she said the divine feminine. And I said, Ooh, we have something in common. So we found that we had more in common than not. And by the end of the conversation, we were both crying and we've stayed in touch since then. So we started out over here and ended up here. And again, if I felt like it was safe to talk to people who, still, no matter what, support him. Because I don't think that there are too many people that would feel threatened by a crunchy granola hippie talking about her political beliefs. I had an experience, not this past year, Christmas, but the year before. I was at a store getting a last-minute gift for my daughter-in-law. My son asked if I could pick up the syrups that you put in coffee. And I'm standing there looking at them and I'm taking pictures and sending, texting them over to him. And there's a man next to me talking to his son on Bluetooth. And he said, yeah, these are$2 more than they were last year. It's all the fault of liberal voters. And I went like that. And he says to his son, I'm going to hang up now. I just made a woman cringe. And we started having a conversation. He introduced himself to me, local police officer. not wearing MAGA gear. And he tells me about his life. He was a history major in college. So he wasn't spouting Trumpaganda and Fox News stuff. And we had an actual intelligent Caring conversation for half an hour. We disagreed about a lot of things, but I listened and he listened. So at the end of the conversation, he says, can I take a picture with you so I can show my son who I hung up on him to talk to? I said, sure. I was wearing a tie dye sweatshirt that said, yeah, be kind. And I said, can I hug you? And he said, sure. And we went our way. So about 20 minutes later, I met Giant getting, picking up some stuff for Christmas dinner. And I look over and there's the guy. He says, I'm not stalking you. I went to Costco to get potato salad, macaroni salad, and they were out of it. So I came here. That was the last I had seen of him. But I had a good conversation and I said to him, I hope I planted some seeds. I hope you really hear what I had to say and that you change your mind. Because it wasn't in an election year. It was when he was in office the first time. No, no, no, Biden was in office at the time. And so I am willing, I am absolutely willing to have a safe, cordial, respectful conversation with anybody.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:this right because we don't things don't get better if we're always butting heads with each other.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, no, I think it's it is interesting to have conversations to just try and understand how a person is thinking like what what led them to have the beliefs that they have to kind of
SPEAKER_00:you know
SPEAKER_02:try to understand their trail of thinking or or not thinking and and one you know and kind of prod as to why they are pursuing a certain line of thinking or favoring one over the other things like that
SPEAKER_01:yeah some of my favorite videos i forget the comedian's name he goes to events and he interviews supporters and they sometimes end up agreeing with him or they're like like the cartoon character head shake like wait a minute wait a minute you know yeah reset button. But again, I, you know, I, I tell people if I lived your life and had your experiences, I might believe the same things you do. But ask yourself, is this what you really want to be? Is this the legacy you want to leave for your children? I'm a grandmother and I do this for my grandchildren, mostly for my grandchildren and, and for any of everybody's grandchildren. I want every child to feel safe in the world. I want every child to have clean air and clean water.
SPEAKER_02:Sure,
SPEAKER_01:yeah. So that's what I do. That's why I do it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I think... We can end on that positive note.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:And thank you again, Edie Weinstein, for joining me.
SPEAKER_00:You're welcome.
SPEAKER_02:Do you want to promote anything, plug anything while
SPEAKER_01:you're here? If people want to check out my website, it's www.opti-mystical.com. And the word where that came from was that I got a message, either a meditation or a dream that said, you're not just an optimist, you're an optimistic who sees the world through the eyes of possibility. And I write for the Good Men Project. I write for a local progressive publication called The Beacon. I write for another local publication called The Cardinal. And I'm always looking for well-paying writing and speaking gigs, if you know anybody.
SPEAKER_02:Wow. Thank you. Thank you so much. And I usually end... these episodes with the forward-looking question, the fuck you going to learn tomorrow? Thanks for joining
SPEAKER_01:us. I have no idea. I'm open to whatever, whatever. I want to learn something positive. I want to learn something that I would just want to, you
SPEAKER_02:know. I like that. I like that, the positive learning, because I think we're sometimes forced with a lot of negative reinforcement or negative learning. And so,
SPEAKER_00:yeah.
SPEAKER_02:make being the intention, having that intentional focus on something positive is good for our wellbeing.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. You got it. All right. Big hugs. Virtual hug. Virtual hug. Yes. Okay. Take care.
SPEAKER_02:Bye. Take care.
UNKNOWN:Bye.
